The Duke Helped Danish Actress Slip Into American Skin

April 12, 2000|By DAVE KEHR The New York Times

Iben Hjejle is now appearing in two very different films.

In the Danish art-house film Mifune, she is a Copenhagen prostitute who takes a job as a housekeeper on a remote farm. In Stephen Frears' Hollywood film High Fidelity, she is a Chicago law student struggling to break off her relationship with a record-store owner (John Cusack).

Two different worlds, two different languages, two highly engaging, equally convincing performances. How did she make the transition?

"It happened that Mifune was screened at the Berlin Film Festival last year," Hjejle (her full name is pronounced EE-ben YAY-luh) said by telephone from Denmark. "There was a party after the screening and the director, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, and I went up to Stephen Frears and said that we really admired his work. One of my favorite movies is his Dangerous Liaisons. So we talked for a little while, and then Frears asked me if I would be interested in working in America with him that same summer, because he was doing this project with John Cusack."

Hjejle, 29, attributes her ease with the language to her mother, who taught English for 25 years. "I grew up with the language, and also English classes begin in fifth grade here in Denmark."

Language is one thing, but how do you learn to be an American?

"It's not that different," she said. "My generation grew up watching American movies and American TV series, and they were never dubbed; they were always subtitled in Danish with the original language.

"My favorites were the old John Ford westerns. A lot of American male actors were my idols when I was a kid. Actually, I would love to be John Wayne. The gunslinger thing. I thought he was pretty cool."

Another hero was Max von Sydow.

"He made the leap," she said. "He was one of the first Scandinavians ever to go to America to work."

Will she be following in his footsteps, as well as Ingrid Bergman's and Greta Garbo's?

"They were Swedes, though," she said. "Now, I'll try to see if I can make it for Denmark."